from the evidence-is-for-sissies dept

While it's certainly possible Russia has been busy using hackers to meddle in (or at least stoke the idiot pyres burning beneath) the U.S. elections, we've noted how actual evidence of this is hard to come by. At the moment, most of this evidence consists of either comments by anonymous government officials, or murky proclamations from security firms that have everything to gain financially from stoking cybersecurity tensions. Of course, transparent evidence is hard to come by when talking about hackers capable of false flag operations while obfuscating their footprints completely.

Granted that hasn't stopped people from demanding a cyber or real world attack on Russia, both idiotic ideas for what should be obvious reasons. But with no hard evidence forthcoming, those looking for perceived justice are apparently getting a little punchy. The Washington Post notes that the government continues to conduct an investigation into the DNC hacks, but the whole "obtaining actual evidence before doing anything stupid" thing is clearly frustrating the 1980's action movie sect of the intelligence community:

"The White House’s and some Cabinet officials’ insistence on awaiting the probe’s results has frustrated some officials at the FBI, the Justice Department and within the intelligence community, who favor holding Moscow accountable. The White House’s continued requests for more evidence, said one official, is “to delay — purposely delay” a public attribution."

Again, it's not like you're going to find a goddamned memo linking Russia to the DNC hacks, and any hacker worth his or her salt isn't going to leave evidence of the hack or their ties to a nation state. There's also the ongoing reality that the leading country when it comes to nation state hacking has generally been the United States, making any vocal moral repudiation kind of laughable. Still, that doesn't seem to be stopping folks like Senator Ben Sasse, who insists that we should just skip the whole actual evidence thing and proceed to lambasting Russia for doing what the United States has done for decades:

"Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), a member of the Homeland Security committee, said President Obama should publicly name Russia and do so before the November election. A failure to do so will only encourage further cyber intrusions and meddling in the U.S. election, he said.

“If the Obama administration has a reason for not clearly attributing these hacks to Russia, it contradicts their own cyber strategy,” Sasse said. “If they’re silent because it would invite response, that suggests that we’re operating from a position of weakness — in other words, we know that we need to aggressively deter cyberattacks, but we are too vulnerable to do it. Neither scenario is reassuring."

But again, what good is publicly shaming Russia for hacking when you've spent decades doing the same thing -- or worse? The only net outcome is you wind up looking like a giant, blithering hypocrite to the global community. The entire article stumbles on like this, quoting various officials on and off the record demanding we do everything from impose sanctions to start leaking Putin's dirty laundry:

"The National Security Agency, for instance, could disrupt a Russian computer system in a way that leaves no doubt who did it and that warns the Russians “to knock it off,” one former intelligence official said. Or the CIA could leak documents that are embarrassing in some way to Russian President Vladi­mir Putin."

Attack! Attack! Who needs evidence? Who needs the moral high ground? Generally, the press-driven public dialogue on cybersecurity and intelligence is so far from what's actually happening in the wild (as intelligence whistleblowers illustrate every few years) that one really should treat press reports on the subject as creative fiction. Combine that with the way nationalism leads to hypocrisy and the fact that most of these "former intelligence officials" don't even know what a gigabyte is, and you've got a recipe for keystone-cops-esque high comedy.

Again, none of this is to suggest that Russia isn't hacking the United States. But to ignore that all nation states are hacking each other all the time is myopic, and suggesting the DNC attack constitutes some rare breach of international ethics is hysterically naive given what we know about the States' own hacking attacks. The real danger here remains the threat of false flag hacking attacks and misinformation campaigns designed to prompt countries to dramatic action without substantive proof. The smarter path is to focus this energy on securing, upgrading and patching government systems to protect against intrusion, even though that's certainly a lot less fun than starting a new world war just because you think hard evidence is for sissies.

from the psychology-of-security dept

The knee-jerk response of politicians to terrorist attacks -- calling for more surveillance, more crackdowns, more displays of purposeless force -- is by now so routine that we don't even remark on it. We tend to go along with their plans because we are very poor at estimating risks, and thus often end up making bad decisions about trade-offs -- specifically, trading off liberty in the (misguided) hope that it will deliver security. That's not a new insight -- Bruce Schneier wrote two fascinating posts on what he called "The Psychology of Security" as far back as 2008. But maybe it's time to start challenging a strategy that hasn't worked, doesn't work and will never work. Maybe we should start pushing for an alternative response to terrorist attacks -- one based on logic and the facts, not rhetoric and fear. That's exactly what Björn Brembs, Professor of Neurogenetics at Regensburg University in Germany, has done in a short blog post about a more rational approach that avoids bad trade-offs. As he writes:

It is very difficult to prevent casualties such as those in the recent terror attacks in Madrid, London, Paris, Brussels or elsewhere, without violating basic human rights and abandoning hard-won liberties.

So what might we do instead? Brembs suggests a new kind of "death prevention program." Not one based on futile attempts to stop every terrorist attack, but a compensatory plan to save far more lives than terrorists ever take:

There are ~1.2 [million] preventable deaths in Europe alone every year. These deaths are due to causes such as lung cancer, accidental injuries, alcohol related diseases, suicides and self-inflicted injuries. With even in the 1970s and 1980s terrorist-related fatalities never exceeding 500 per year, we are confident that we will be able, from now on, to save at least 100 lives for every one that is being taken in a terrorist attack.

To reach this ambitious goal, we will start with increasing our efforts to prevent alcohol and tobacco-related deaths through effective public-health intervention programs as well as basic and applied biomedical research into the prevention, causes and treatment of these diseases and disorders. With about 30,000 annual fatalities in traffic-related accidents, we will also introduce European-wide speed limits, strong enforcement via speed-traps and an increased police force which collaborates across Europe. Drivers convicted of violating speed limits or DUI will have their driver's licenses withdrawn for extended periods of time. Should these activities fail to reach these goals, we will start targeting more areas.

Although it could be argued that some of those measures are themselves restrictions on freedom (and things like speed traps haven't been shown to make the roads any safer), against the background of today's harsh anti-terror laws, and plans for even more surveillance -- the UK's Snooper's Charter, for example -- those don't look as bad. In any case, implementation details are less important than shifting emphasis to this very different approach. The idea of focusing on stopping preventable deaths caused by known factors, rather than chasing after unpredictable events is a good one. Moreover, as Brembs writes, a "death prevention program" would not only preserve basic human rights and civil liberties better than today's response, it would also benefit the economy and boost employment:

Our investment in basic and applied research will yield discoveries that will benefit all of humanity long after the last terrorist has sacrificed his life in vain. With our new program, every single terrorist attack will save the lives of countless more citizens than it has cost, turning terrorism into a net life-saving activity.

That, surely, is the way to truly defeat the terrorists -- rather than handing them an easy victory by accepting disproportionate measures that destroy the very freedoms politicians claim to defend.

from the golf-clap dept

We've seen a wide range of methods businesses have devised for dealing with less than praising online reviews of their operations. Some choose to threaten libel. Others promise fines. Still others invoke a sort of holy legal wrath, with the weight of the Almighty tipping the scales of justice. Mind you, none of these methods does much to ingratiate the business to the public and often backfires completely by bringing attention to the negative reviews that otherwise would have been completely absent. A new method is clearly needed.

That's where the Atomic Grill in Morgantown, WV, comes in. They too were faced with an online review that was not only not entirely positive, but also incorporated the caveman-ish request that employees of the eatery "show more skin", because food without near-nipple just doesn't taste as good, apparently. The owner of the grill, Daniel McCawley, was understandably less than pleased.

"It was brutish. I was upset. I'm a father of a 12-year-old girl and I've got five sisters," McCawley said. "The way that women are treated is pretty personal as far as I'm concerned."

Agreed. But what to do about it? Lawsuits don't seem to work, as shown above, and anger on its own isn't all that effective. Plus, there's that probably-not-correct platitude that "the customer is always right." So McCawley decided to marry his revulsion to that concept and concede defeat to the review in the best way possible. He decided to "show more skin."

From now through Memorial Day, Atomic Grill will be offering a potato skin special for $7, and 100% of the proceeds will go directly to the West Virginia Foundation for Rape Information Services. He said the restaurant has so far received a "tremendous" amount of support. "My Facebook blew up overnight," he said. "I really hope this will be a positive thing."

So, he provided "more skin" in the form of potato skins, avoided any legal nonsense, showed himself to be an admirably level-headed business owner while still retaining a moral compass, and subsequently generated a ton of goodwill and publicity for his business. That's how it's done, overly legal business owners. A little humor mixed with social shaming does the job so much better than profit-milking lawyers.

from the with-humor-and-sarcasm dept

We've mentioned for years that Techdirt content is regularly copied and placed on various spam blogs. They're all over the place, and it's not hard to find. If we listened to some people, we'd be spending all our time sending off DMCA notices and venting angrily on insular blogs about how much more successful we'd be if only everyone else were responsible for blocking that infringement. But, of course, we recognize that most of the spam blogs get no attention at all, and anyone who does actually stumble across them, and like them, will quickly realize that the content comes from somewhere else, and will eventually find their way here and (hopefully) stick around. In fact, the site that merely scrapes our stuff without credit will probably have what little reputation they might already have harmed even more by such poor internet etiquette.

Of course, every so often, we see such things happen with larger sites. A few months ago, for example, a well-known blog that we like (and have linked to quite often) posted an exact replica of one of our articles (word for word), but with one of their author's names on it. I won't say who it was, because it's not that important. We were a bit surprised by this, but mainly because we didn't see why they would want to hurt their own reputation like that, as people were bound to notice. I sent a quick email to the editor and the writer, saying that (1) we were absolutely fine with them keeping everything the way it was but (2) we just wanted to see if perhaps the item was posted in error because it seemed out of character (the site posts all original content). Within a few hours, we got multiple apologies as they explained the snafu (involving them using a new aggregator, and the writer sending one of our article to the editor just because he might be interested in the story, and he got confused, thinking it was the latest article). They also posted a really unnecessary public apology, which we told them they didn't need to do (in fact, we told them they could keep the original article up). Basically, no big deal in the end. No threats. No DMCA. No screaming about copyrights. Just a friendly email and knowledge of how reputations work and everything worked itself out.

Point being: rather than relying on copyright or screaming about infringement, there are often much more effective ways of dealing with such things. Take, for example, the way Cracked (one of our absolute favorite websites, and it should be one of yours too) recently handled the UK's Daily Mail's decision to copy a Cracked article on horrible tourists. Rather than going all DMCA, screaming about infringement, Cracked did what Cracked does best, and brought the funny, publishing a "sincere apology" to the Daily Mail admitting that Cracked authors get "fabulous space-time powers" and the most logical explanation for what happened was that Cracked contributor XJ Selman, went forward in time, copied the Daily Mail's Sunday column, then went back in time, and pre-published it 24 hours earlier. Obviously.

we at Cracked are in the wrong here. Yes, our Saturday article flat-out plagiarized The Daily Mail's Sunday article. But how did this happen?

You see, when you sign up to write articles for Cracked -- which absolutely anyone can do, more information on that here -- you don't simply get the opportunity to pen monkeyshines for one of the most popular comedy websites on the planet. No, a singing jewel will descend from the heavens and mystically bless you with fabulous space-time powers.

Now, the Daily Mail (right, we've heard the Daily Fail jokes, no need to remind us) already has about the crappiest reputation that a newspaper (and, I use the term loosely) can have. So, perhaps this does little to harm their reputation. But what this absolutely does do is raise Cracked's reputation among lots and lots of people, for responding to someone copying their stuff with typical and fitting humor and wit.

And, really, that's a point that we've been trying to make for over a decade: when faced with these kinds of situations, so many people get so focused on "punishing" other people, without ever bothering to think about what it means for their own reputation. Yet, when there are opportunities to embrace those things to enhance their own reputation, so few seem willing to do it. Yet, as with so many things, Cracked has it right. The Daily Mail is a joke already. Rather than blasting off a DMCA notice or some sort of legal threat, just make the most of things by reacting humorously and boosting your own reputation.

A person unfamiliar with legalese may become frightened and run to another attorney for help in deciphering this mystical language of lawyerly legend. The lawyer who has been tasked with translating legalese to English may then become annoyed, and issue a scathingly funny letter in return.

For an example of how to write a great response to a cease and desist letter, keep reading…

Jake Freivald, a resident of West Orange, New Jersey who once ran for town council and lost, started westorange.info, a rudimentary website that provides basic information about the town, like “places to talk [online]” and “places to get news.” It doesn’t look like a site that’s sponsored by West Orange in any way, shape, or form — unless the town hired middle schoolers to create its online presence.

That said, not long after he started the site, Freivald received a demand letter from Richard D. Trenk, the township attorney for West Orange (and an alum of my alma mater). Here is Trenk’s cease and desist letter (retyped online by Freivald, who added sics where necessary to indicate errors in the original):

Dear Mr. Freivald:

I am the Township Attorney for the Township of West Orange (“Township”). It has come to our attention that, on or about May 13, 2013, you registered and began to use the domain name “westorange.info” (the “Info Domain”). The Township interprets this action as an effort by you to confuse and conflate the Township’s official domain name and Web site with the Info Domain that you maintain.

The use of the Township’s name is unauthorized and is likely to cause confustion [sic], mistake or to deceive the public and may be a violation of the Township’s federally protected rights. The Info Domain falsely creates the impression that the Township is associated or affiliated with the Info Domain. At a minimum, this action has been taken with constructive knowledge of the Township’s name and Web site, and constitutes bad faith use of the Info Domain.

Accordingly, the Township demands that you cease and desist from use, ownership and maintenance of the Info Domain. The Township further demands that, within ten (10) days, the Info Domain be withdrawn from the current registrar, and that you cease all current and future use of the Info Domain, or anything else confusingly similar thereto.

The Township reserves all rights and remedies.

Please be guided accordingly.

Very truly yours,

Richard D. Trenk, Township Attorney

We hope you didn’t get “confusted” by that. Freivald’s lawyer, Stephen B. Kaplitt — formerly of Weil Gotshal, Cadwalader, the U.S. State Department, and Beacon Financial — wasn’t, and it looks like he was “guided accordingly” (don’t you hate that phrase?) when he penned this fantastic response:

My favorite line: “So that I may properly counsel my client, please also explain what in Sam Hill’s name you meant by ‘anything else confusingly similar thereto.’” What an epic letter. Bravo, Mr. Kaplitt!

from the front-group dept

We've written numerous times about Scott Turow during his time as head of the Author's Guild, and the amazing thing to me is that despite the fact he's been getting blistering criticism from a variety of people -- including tons of authors -- he never, ever seems to even acknowledge the points of his critics, but continues to just say the same debunked crap over and over again. Last week, for example, we did a point-by-point debunking of his error-laden, factually inaccurate and totally misleading op-ed in which he argued that pretty much everything on the internet was harming authors. I was gratified to see our debunking picked up widely -- with many of the tweets in support of our response coming from authors (including a few best selling authors). It made me wonder what sort of organization Turow is running.

Best selling author Barry Eisler penned an interesting response to Turow on JA Konrath's blog, in which he pointed out that Turow's position has consistently been in favor of "Legacy Publishing," (i.e., the big five publishers in NY) rather than authors. A similar reply from author David Gaughran pointed out that Turow seems to be so focused on propping up the legacy publishers that he directly called for an antitrust investigation into price-fixing by those publishers to be dropped, regardless of the facts of the case. Yes, even though such price fixing would harm authors, Turow immediately sided with the publishers. Incredible.

But, perhaps more telling is how the Authors Guild has now completely shut itself off from the outside world. Gaughrin also notes that right before Turow's NYT op-ed, he had also published a silly blog post about Amazon buying Goodreads, and got torn apart in the comments for the post. But if you look at the Author's Guild blog post about the NYT's oped, you'll see there are no comments and that "comments for this thread are now closed." Eisler notes that it was not always this way. In fact, he had submitted a comment to the blog post, apparently with a link to my piece, saying:

"That Scott Turow refuses to respond to this demolition of his facts, his knowledge of the law, and even his baseline logic tells you all you need to know about his integrity. And about the true function of the "Authors Guild" of which he is president."

Eisler received notification that his comment was "awaiting moderation," but obviously that comment never ran, and instead, the Authors Guild shut down comments entirely. It appears that not only are they unwilling to respond to the large number of authors who are complaining about how ridiculous Turow's position is, they also want to stick their hands over their eyes and ears to pretend it's not even happening. That's not leadership. That's cowardice.

In the meantime, even the libraries are punching back. The American Library Association responded to Turow, "taking issue" with his op-ed and pointing out how Turow is wrong about libraries and about the law.

The failure to respond speaks volumes. And it says that the Authors Guild does not represent authors at all, but rather the legacy publishers, and a very small number of authors who succeeded under the old system. Turow's actions have done massive damage to the perception and credibility of the Authors Guild. And the Guild's decision to stop hearing from critics, especially authors, is quite telling about how it views the world. It's amazing any modern author thinks it's worthwhile to be a member of such an organization.

Fortunately, there are exceptions. Reason Hit & Run directs our attention to Officer Matthew J. Lyons of the Oceanside, California police department. Lyons runs into a few issues that usually send other officers scrambling for their handguns and threats: an openly-carried weapon and a camera.

However, Lyons handles the situation in a professional, cordial manner, even as the person filming the encounter declines to show him any ID or provide a last name. Even better, he commends him for exercising his rights.

In just under three minutes, Lyons puts together a superb primer on how to handle interacting with the public, one that should be required viewing for law enforcement members everywhere.

from the baby-steps,-baby-steps,-baby-steps dept

Leaks happen. They just do. They're unfortunate, they're rarely complete products, and it's understandable that a content producer would be less than thrilled about it. But they happen. Time and time again, we witness examples of content companies losing their minds over these leaks, whether it's Ubisoft murdering their reputation by reacting to leaks with ineffective DRM, or Fox taking a long hard look at how the leaked version of Wolverine did nothing to stymie huge box office returns and therefore decided to get the FBI involved to arrest the leaker. It seems that when these leaks happen, the reaction is emotional rather than cognitive.

Enter Crytek, developer of the immensely anticipated Crysis 2 game. As was seemingly inevitable, Edge was among others that reported the game was leaked. And not just some early build of the game either, but rather both versions (the 3D version and the non-3D version) were made available via torrent sites. The download included the full games (requiring nearly a full blu-ray disk's worth of storage for the 3D version), online capability, and even the DRM signing keys.

So, we all know what the reaction was coming from Crytek execs, right? Piracy killed them, left them bleeding in a gutter, the victim of a violent crime. The sky is falling. The action allowed a wormhole to open up and demons are now killing our women and children. Puppies everywhere keeled over dead. America has fallen to the terrorists/communists/atheists/robots/Satan/etc. Corn farmers everywhere are committing mass ritual suicide, knowing that they'll never earn a livable wage. Right?

Turns out, not so much. Harken back to what Mike suggested about how Fox should have responded to the Wolverine leak:

"Hey Wolverine fans! We know that you're all looking forward to the release of the movie next month. We're excited too! By now you may have heard that an early totally unfinished version has been leaked online. It's missing a whole bunch of stuff -- including some amazing special effects -- and honestly, this version isn't a finished product at all. We think you'll get a much better overall experience by waiting for the full finished product, but we certainly understand that some of you just can't wait (trust us, we feel the same way!). If that's the case, please, feel free to check it out, but please remember that this isn't even close to the final version. If anything, think of this as a "behind-the-scenes" peek of just what a movie looks like before all the real "movie magic" gets put in there. If you do check it out, we hope you'll join us May 1st to check out the finalized version as well on the big screen the way we intended for you to see this awesome movie. It's just a month away!"

In this case, Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli actually did make a similarly reasonable address to the company's fans on the Crysis 2 forums:

"Despite this unfortunate incident, we can assure you that PC gaming is very important to us and will always be important to Crytek in the future. We are all still focused on delivering a great gaming experience to our true and honest fans. I hope you will enjoy Crysis 2 on PC, as we think it is our best PC game yet!"

Huh. You know what, that actually sounds eerily similar to Mike's suggestion. Maybe not quite so optimistic and glowing, but pretty damn close. And I think this message is perfect. Tell the fans that, while you don't approve of what happened, they're still important to you, you're going to create for their PC gaming needs, and even throw in a comment about rewarding their dedication as real, paying fans. Perfect. And judging by the response from the company's fans in the comments section of the forum, his notes are ringing true with them.

So cheers to you, Cevat. You could have gone crazy and reacted emotionally, but you didn't. You made a reasoned statement. While it's sad that such level-headedness is rare enough to deserve note, I salute you nonetheless.

from the that's-a-lot dept

In yet another case of a copyright holder turning "piracy" into publicity, security firm Avast has been making some news after watching a single pro license apparently "go viral" on file sharing sites, leading it to be installed 774,651 times around the globe. The company is claiming it's been installed in 200 countries -- including two computers in Vatican City. Of course, this might raise some skepticism, because depending on who you talk to there are fewer than 200 countries in the world (though, others claim there are more -- so... who knows). Either way, it does appear that Avast has turned the whole thing into a publicity stunt, both with the press coverage, and popping up a note on those 774,561 installs, urging people to switch to legit versions (including the company's popular free version).

from the action/reaction dept

In the wake of all the fuss over Wikileaks, there's been a lot of talk from critics of the site that its founder, Julian Assange, has some sort of anti-American focus. Not only does this seem unlikely given his previous activities, he's also made it clear that he soon plans to release secret documents from both China and Russia, which he feels are both in need of significant reform. As for his general motivations, some have also assumed that he's got some sort of general anti-government views, but that also does not appear to be the case. A few folks have sent over this absolutely fascinating and completely worthwhile read about Assange's general views on governments and secrecy, and it's a hell of a lot more nuanced than most people assume.

The basic point is not to necessarily expose any specifically damaging information (and many have argued that nothing all that surprising has been exposed in this latest dump), but to reduce the ability of governments to communicate secretly -- because when you allow widespread communication by governments in secret, "conspiracies" form. That word is quite loaded, so I'm not sure it's really the best word to use. Perhaps a better way of thinking about it is that if larger groups within the government feel that they can act without oversight, they are much more likely to do things they would never do with oversight. By regularly leaking information -- even banal information -- the response is to clamp down on information sharing within the government. And, in fact, that's exactly what the federal government is doing.

In many ways, this is similar to what we were just discussing concerning how the US response to terrorism was exactly what Al Qaeda planned, it appears the US's response to Wikileaks is also exactly what Assange planned. The goal isn't to expose all secrets or anything like that -- but to reduce the ability of cabals of secrecy to form within governments, within which questionable plans might result.

The leak, in other words, is only the catalyst for the desired counter-overreaction; Wikileaks wants to provoke the conspiracy into turning off its own brain in response to the threat. As it tries to plug its own holes and find the leakers, he reasons, its component elements will de-synchronize from and turn against each other, de-link from the central processing network, and come undone. Even if all the elements of the conspiracy still exist, in this sense, depriving themselves of a vigorous flow of information to connect them all together as a conspiracy prevents them from acting as a conspiracy.

In both of these stories, it shows how a system based on centralization responds to a (very, very different) distributed threat. And, in both cases, the expected (and almost inevitable) response seems to play directly into the plans of those behind the threat. In a way, it's quite fascinating. Of course, in the case of terrorism, it's frustrating, because the response only serves to further harm the country and its people. But with a situation like Wikileaks, it's potentially quite a good thing. As noted, these kinds of leaks can help us have a better, less corrupt government that is more responsive to the people it actually represents.

It is a "scandal" when the Government conceals things it is doing without any legitimate basis for that secrecy. Each and every document that is revealed by WikiLeaks which has been improperly classified -- whether because it's innocuous or because it is designed to hide wrongdoing -- is itself an improper act, a serious abuse of government secrecy powers. Because we're supposed to have an open government -- a democracy -- everything the Government does is presumptively public, and can be legitimately concealed only with compelling justifications. That's not just some lofty, abstract theory; it's central to having anything resembling "consent of the governed."

Greenwald is dead on, but Assange's point is to take that even a level deeper. It's not just about improper acts and defaulting to being secret when the information does not warrant it. It's about how within that secrecy, government actors are enabled to act without oversight. The very knowledge that they can get away with things without oversight creates temptations that are often too great to pass up. And that's where corruption comes from. I don't buy most crazy conspiracy theories, concerning government actors -- most of which are imaginative, but have little basis in fact. But there is no doubt that there is a tremendous level of straight corruption going on and that is massively enabled by such secrecy. And while it's probably true that the overall system of corruption is much more resilient than Assange believes, it may be too early to tell whether or not these efforts do move the ball in any meaningful way.

As for the idea that revealing these documents is somehow damaging to diplomacy, even that seems to be in question. Matthew Yglesias reasonably points out that such transparency can actually enable much greater diplomacy by making it clear when countries are actually living up to their stated promises. One of the lessons you learn in basic negotiations is that, while there may be value in holding back certain information, quite often the absolute best negotiated results for all parties comes out of negotiations where the parties accurately lay their cards on the table. This keeps hidden agendas out of the way and allows for more frank and open discussions. Of course, this is all centered on a belief that negotiations are a non-zero sum game. That might not always be the case. But the level of secrecy we have today seems to presume that all negotiations are a zero sum game, and that's absolutely not true.

Whether or not you agree with Assange or the entire concept of Wikileaks (and, like many others, I have some ambivalence about the operation itself), it is important to understand the deeper level of what's going on here. It's what happens when a centralized system, based on locking up information and creating artificial barriers, runs smack into a decentralized, open system, built around sharing. For those who are trying to understand why this whole story reminds me of what's happened in the entertainment industry over the past decade, note the similarities. It's why I've been saying for years that the reason I've spent so much time discussing the music industry is because it was an early warning sign of the types of challenges that were going to face almost every centralized industry or organization out there. That included all sorts of other industries, but it also includes governments.